Only The Beginning
by Todd's Pet
Summary: Started out a romance with Todd and his human, but ended up an observation on how Todd ended up in that Genii cell, receptive to working with Sheppard, a human. I used the transcript for the dialogue between Todd and Shep, but Todd's emotions are mine/his


Only The Beginning

He wandered into the observation bay, seeking solitude; a moment's respite from the constant cacophony of whisperings in his head. The whole hive was restless, filled with discontented thoughts leaking from the minds of every wraith who knew it could have been them.

A small sound broke into his reveries; a sound that made his stomach clench in a way he always found hard to decipher, uncertain whether it made him feel solidarity or just plain hunger – the sound of a human in distress. Turning his head to locate the soft sob, he saw her sitting there, alone, silent and sad; one single tear had left a shining track down her cheek, and he decided that just looking at her made him feel strangely melancholic.

"Your wraith was the one left behind?" he asked her quietly.

She didn't startle or jump; in fact she made no sign of acknowledgement and he wondered if he should simply leave her to her grief, but as he turned to leave, she said, "Why does She do it? Why does She leave them to their fate?"

"The Queen is but one and we are hundreds; to Her we are all dispensable," he told her with faultless logic and turned back to look at her. "If one of us is foolish enough to be captured, She will not waste time or resources to find us. She has hundreds more at her disposal."

He sat beside her on the bench, leaving a clear space between them, not out of fastidiousness for the closeness of a human, but because he felt compelled to respect her need for solitude. They sat in silence for several minutes before she finally said, "It's not right… it seems so callous…"

"I sense you would have risked everything to save him…" He turned and studied her profile minutely and sudden realisation dawned on him as he inspected her solemn face. "You loved him," he stated; a fact not a question.

This woman who emanated grief like it was a palpable entity, turned to look him in the eye for the first time and said, "I still do."

Feeling as if he was somehow intruding on an intimate moment, he stood to leave her to her memories of the wraith she had clearly shared much with, but something inexplicably turned him back and he laid his hand gently and briefly on her shoulder. Softly, more gently than she had ever heard any wraith speak, even the one she now mourned, he told her, "I am sorry for your loss."

Then he turned to leave her, as she sat there alone and watching the endless stars they travelled through, seeing them shrink smaller and smaller as they flew farther and farther away from the wraith who still held her heart in the palm of his hand.

At first, he thought that he would likely never run into this woman again anyway, but just as he reached the door, he heard her small, soft voice say, "Thank you."

And in that moment, as he turned into the corridor and walked away from her, he knew in his bones that, not only would he see her again, but that this was only the beginning…

-oOo-

Why hadn't her heart leapt out of her chest and exploded? At the very least it should have stopped, refused to keep on beating without his presence. How could her body still live and function when her soul had curled up and died? She felt empty, devoid of all feeling; numbed by the deep, bone-freezing cold that his absence had left in her life. There was a big, gaping hole in her chest where her heart used to be; where he used to be. How could she walk around with this great wound and yet no one else saw it?

But he saw it – that other wraith who had sat with her in the observation bay last week. What he had said was as close to comfort as any wraith could probably give, she thought. In fact she hadn't thought that any wraith could be so kind, excepting perhaps the one who had left such an aching emptiness in her chest, though even with him such moments had been kept strictly behind closed doors.

The sudden rush of memories assaulted her as surely as a dagger straight to the heart – if she had a heart left, that is, instead of this black nothingness that engulfed her since the day they had left without him.

Was he still alive, she wondered? When they had first left that planet she had known he was; she had felt his presence like wisps of soft, white smoke drifting around her body everywhere she went. But as the time and the distance grew, so the precious wisps of his presence faded ever fainter until she could now no longer feel him near.

She blinked back the tears and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Would this ever end, she asked herself; how could the lack of something cause so much pain? Incongruously, her thoughts went again to the other wraith in the observation bay. Knowing that someone on this massive flying city of a ship had even an inkling of how she felt should have made her feel better, but it didn't; if anything his kindness merely made her heart hurt all the more.

Now wraithless, she went about her general duties like a mindless automaton; not necessarily a bad thing, she realised, as the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself, to have another wraith show any interest in her. So she spent her days walking about the hive with her head bent and trying to blend into the shadows. But at night she curled into a corner and let her heart bleed until she had no more tears left to cry.

-oOo-

With a heavy heart she walked through the busy corridors, her small bundle of possessions hugged to her chest as if she were trying to erect a barrier between her and the rest of the hive. Casting surreptitious glances at a few of the wraith that passed her by, she wondered if he would look like any of them and prayed that he would not look like the one whose face still haunted her dreams at night.

She knew she couldn't avoid it forever, but she had hoped she might have been able to drag it out for a few months rather than mere weeks. When Mother had told her to report to this wraith's quarters she had wanted to argue, had wanted to plead with her to give her just a few more weeks… as if that was all it would take to mend her shattered heart. But risking the wrath of Mother was almost as foolhardy as standing up to Her.

Mother had been a worshipper on this hive for longer than anyone could remember; you didn't live that long among wraith, let alone prosper, if you couldn't put aside your feelings in the interests of survival. Mother's ability to do so had allowed her to rise through the ranks of the humans who lived aboard the hive on a permanent basis to her current position at the head of them all. It was rumoured that she was more than three hundred years old, though she looked no more than fifty at most.

That was more than reason enough to capitulate, she felt. Mother had told her that a human slave who did not serve any one particular wraith stood out too much. And so Mother had re-allocated her, saying she would allow her to decline only twice and warned her not to be too fussy.

All too soon, she arrived at her destination and stood nervously in front of the door to his quarters. Grasping her bundle tightly in front of her and holding her breath, she pressed her palm to the small light panel at the side, then took one step back and waited, head bent and looking at the floor.

It took several long seconds for the door to slide silently aside, spilling a soft, blue light into the hallway that made her feel uncomfortably in the spotlight. She felt his eyes on her, assessing her, looking her up and down. In the dim and distant past she remembered her wraith doing just this on the first day she was sent to him, but the intervening years had softened her recall and her memories of even that moment were sweet.

"Come in," the other wraith said, and the sound of his voice made her look up sharply. It was him; the wraith in the observation bay. Bowing her head again respectfully, she stepped inside and he took her bundle from her and laid it down on a bench, then turned to look at her again.

"So, little one, has your heart mended yet?" he asked her with a softness that almost made her weep.

"Humans do not heal as quickly as wraith," she whispered, still looking at her own feet, but knowing that she must mend soon or put her very life at risk.

"You were coming to the attention of the wrong kind," the wraith said, echoing her thoughts. "So I spoke to Mother and asked for you to be sent to me." He heard her take a small gasp and went on. "I am patient and undemanding. I suggest you accept my offer."

The wraith took a step closer and lifted her chin with one long and elegant finger. "What is your name?" he asked her gently.

"Lauren," she replied and, as she looked up into his eyes, she felt a gentle warmth spread tentatively in her chest, as if her heart had just remembered that it was still beating.

-oOo-

Lauren watched him from the doorway as he gave his hair a perfunctory comb by dragging his fingers through it. Sighing wistfully, she remembered the pleasure of mornings spent carefully combing her wraith's long, smooth, silky hair until it had shone like threads of silver… shaking her head, she reminded herself that this wraith was her wraith now. Steeling herself for rejection from this creature whose moods could swing rapidly from kind and gentle to impatient and cranky within a single moment, she stepped into the wash room and asked him, "Would you like me to brush it for you?"

"No. It's fine as it is," he replied brusquely.

She looked up at him, his face so different from the wraith she had spent so many decades with, and yet there was something about him that was intensely attractive and, yes – she could see that the tangled waterfall of his hair suited him, seemed to embody his spontaneity, the rawness of him.

Nevertheless Lauren felt the brunt of his rejection deeper than she had felt anything for some time now. He went to push past her but her crestfallen expression made him stop. Rearranging his features into some semblance of sympathy he told her, "You look tired. Your sleep is still disturbed even after all this time…"

"It's only been five weeks…" she replied carefully.

"Ah yes, and as you said, humans do not heal as quickly as wraith." A small frown creased between his brow ridges, pulling on the top half of the starburst tattoo emblazoned around his left eye. "It is fortunate that wraith are also more patient…"

Catching her breath she kept her head lowered when she replied, "I'm sorry. I've neglected some of my duties," and she turned sharply to leave, but he held her back with a hand on her shoulder.

"My hope is you will not think it a duty…" He brushed his lips briefly across the back of her head and the deep timbre of his voice through her hair sent shivers down her spine. "My impatience is as much for you as for myself," he went on. "You cry out in your sleep for him still. I wish to heal you of this pain."

"You can't," she told him more sharply than she intended, and she instantly regretted her bluntness when he spun her around to face him, his hands gripping the tops of her arms painfully.

"Surely you must know he is dead now? You must move on," he told her, the low growl in his voice warning her that his patience with her was wearing thin.

But instead of capitulating, Lauren glared into his eyes. "Have you any idea what it feels like to want something so badly you ache inside?" she pleaded.

"Yes, actually, I do," he told her, genuinely trying to understand.

"The hunger? It's not the same! You know you can quench it eventually," she countered, "But what if you know you can never have it, even though you just can't go on living without it…?"

"You will go on living without him, even if the living has no joy for a while, and you will recover."

"Without him, what's the point of anything?"

The frown between his brows drew deeper, his hands grasped her tighter. "You love him this much still?" In place of an answer she threw herself against him with a short howl, like a wounded animal, and buried her face in his chest. Sliding his hands from her shoulders to wrap them around her, he felt her small, fragile body heaving from the deep, racking sobs that were now tearing through her. He suspected this was the first time she had actually cried since she had lost the one she loved and, awkward though it made him feel, he held her until her tears began to subside.

"Let me heal you," he whispered into her hair.

Was he telling her he wanted step into that yawning hole in her chest, fill the empty space, plug the haemorrhaging of her soul… could anyone else ever fill the gap that her wraith had left? Lauren knew that, if she was to survive, she had to let this new wraith into her heart and mind.

-oOo-

It had been many decades ago that she had managed to let go of the fear enough to let a wraith put his feeding hand on her chest for the first time. It had taken her smooth-haired wraith several years to persuade her, and when he finally had she'd wondered why she had ever hesitated. It had been the pinnacle of passion and for those few precious moments she had been part of him and he of her; she had felt herself full to the brim with the smell of him, the taste of him, until, when he had stopped, she had felt bereaved from the loss of him.

But sharing her life force with this wraith felt different. Instead of a head-reeling rapture that had left her breathless and giddy, this was softer and gentler somehow and left her feeling safer and more peaceful than she had ever known.

When she opened her eyes she felt her cheeks wet, realised tears had been flowing freely down her face. Still kneeling beside her, his hand lying lightly on her chest, his eyes glistened with emotions unfamiliar to him, emotions he had touched within her, emotions he now understood.

"I didn't know," he said softly, his voice husky and catching with the strength and rawness of what he had felt from her. "How do you live with this clawing at your soul?" Lauren sighed, letting her head fall forward and resting her forehead on his shoulder. He enfolded her in his arms, and told her softly, "If you could come to love me half as much, I would be content. If it takes a hundred years, I will take this pain from you and bring you peace."

-oOo-

Sitting in the dark in the middle of the night, she watched him sleep, his deep ribcage rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing, while she thought back over the decades to that first time with him. He had kept his word, although it hadn't taken a hundred years… not quite. Lauren never thought she'd ever be able to love another, but here she was, willing and happy to belong to this wraith, mind, body and soul.

He was not an easy wraith to live with, temperamental and with moods as changeable as the solar winds, she had learned to interpret his expressions; keeping a low profile when he was cantankerous, being gently encouraging when he was doleful and simply enjoying the moments when he was capricious and playful. But underneath all his moods there was a common thread of kindness that was always there, so that she never felt threatened, no matter how much he sometimes growled or snapped.

After that first time, when he had promised her peace, she had resigned herself to her fate with this one, knowing she would never find another wraith like the one she had loved so long ago now. Sure enough she had grown to love him too, although she knew – and he knew – that it was not the same kind of love. The all-consuming passion she had known would never happen again.

Oh, there was fire in their matings, all right, and his touch could still make her skin flush with desire for him even after several decades together. But the almost euphoric ecstasy Lauren had known with her first wraith had somehow transmuted into blissful contentment with this one. This wraith she now sat watching as he slept had brought her tranquillity and peace of mind deeper than anything she had ever experienced.

In spite of her first love having lost none of its strength since the time of his passing, she wondered if perhaps this wraith was her destiny after all. As she sat in the night, watching his gentle face in the repose of sleep – something she did often simply for the sheer pleasure of it – she would ask the goddess if she was here with him for a reason, for it felt so right to her that there had to be a purpose behind it.

But tonight was not one of those nights to sit and ponder the meaning of life; tonight she was content simply to exist, to belong to him, to crawl into the refuge of his arms. She stood from her bench under the star-filled window and walked silently across the room to where he lay. Tilting her head to look down the length of this proud wraith's long and lean body, her mouth involuntarily curled into a soft smile and she let the blanket fall from her shoulders to the floor.

Lying down beside him, Lauren spooned her body closely into his back, slipped her arms around his waist and slid her hands up to his chest, holding the flat of her palms tightly against his hard pectoral muscles and feeling the strong beat of his heart through her fingers. Burying her face in his hair at the back of his neck, she felt rather than heard his sleepily rousing growl as it built up through his abdomen to his lungs and reverberated through her ribcage, like the insistent drumbeat of music, throbbing through her body and awakening her desire.

-oOo-

"You must be very careful. They must not have even the smallest clue to link you with wraith," he told her solemnly.

"I have undertaken many trips to barter for food and you have never been concerned. Haven't I always come home to you safely?" She smiled and covered his hand on the table between them with her own.

The black slitted pupils of his yellow reptile eyes widened as they looked at her, reflecting the warm red glow of the hive wall behind her, but also betraying the warmth of his feelings for her. "Indeed, you have," he said. "And I have often wondered why you do come back, instead of taking the opportunity to escape the yoke of wraith domination…" His lop-sided grin emphasised the mocking tone of his voice, the deep laugh she loved so much only just below the surface.

Lauren squeezed his hand as she leaned closer and replied with a wry grin, "The yoke of your domination is an easy burden to carry."

His laugh surfaced in a relaxed wave of dulcet chuckles and he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed his warm lips against her fingers. Still holding her hand he looked at her, his eyes no more than a deep amber rim glittering around pupils wide with desire, and stroked the top of her hand with the long fingers of his other hand. "I would spare you the danger," he told her.

Now Lauren laughed, though there was an edgy nervousness to it. "There is no danger in a simple bartering trip," she said.

"I have the Queen's ear," he replied. "It can be done."

"Ah, but you forget that Mother will not be defied, even by the hive Commander," she countered. "I will be fine, as always."

A low warning growl pushed past the affection in his eyes. "There is something about these Genii that unsettles me… they are not the simple farmers they appear to be…"

Lauren touched his starburst tattoo with her free hand and traced it with a gentle fingertip. "Just to please you, I will be extra vigilant," she told him softly. "I would never wish to be parted from you a moment longer than I have to be, my love."

-oOo-

Lauren couldn't remember how she came to be here. One minute she had been trading for food, like any other time, and the next she was being chased through the village. The high-pitched human voice had screeched "Wraith worshipper!" (How odd that she should be so used to wraith by now that the sound of her own kind assaulted her ears) and she had turned to see who they were referring to and had seen all eyes on her.

And now she sat in the bare, cold, stone cell, wondering how they could possibly have known – did she look different, act different – what had it been that had made her stand out? Was she more nervous than usual because of the unusual concern he had expressed? "How did they know?" she asked out loud.

"You have the smell of wraith all over you."

"What?" Lauren looked up but she was alone in her cell. Then the voice spoke again and she realised it had come from an adjoining cell.

"You reek of wraith." The disembodied voice repeated its accusation.

A bitter grunt of a laugh escaped Lauren's lips as she remembered hurrying from her wraith's bed, forgetting to shower in her haste, so as not to be late for Mother's summons to join the landing party. How ironic that her attempt to assuage his fears for her safety had resulted in the very thing that now placed her life in danger.

-oOo-

The sound of heavy-booted footfalls echoed around the room where he paced, back and forth, back and forth; he has been pacing now for two hours and with every minute that passed he grew more restless, his jaw taut, his broad back muscles tense.

"Must we waste any more time?" he snarled his demand at the other wraith who stood to attention between two drones at the door to the Queen's chambers.

"You must await Her decision, Commander," the wraith replied, unable to hide a slight nasal whine that betrayed his contempt for this Commander who has openly shown concern for a missing human worshipper.

Just as the Commander spun round to face him and was about to lash out at his insubordination, the door slid aside and She stepped from beneath its archway. Both wraith instantly turned and bowed their heads and she looked down the length of her nose at them both.

"It should come as no surprise that the answer is no," she hissed without preamble. "In fact the surprise is mine that you should even ask it."

The Commander kept his head bowed and his hands held by his sides in keeping with wraith etiquette, but bunched his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. A side-long glance at the other wraith showed an insolent curl of his upper lip and the Commander made a mental note to keep an eye on that one.

"With respect, my Queen, she is a valuable and useful member of the human community on this ship and it would take but an hour or two to retrieve her."

"Yes, but in being discovered and captured she has outgrown her usefulness," the Queen responded. "She will be easily enough replaced."

The Commander raised his head then and looked straight into the Queen's indifferent eyes. How wrong you are, he thought, she could never be replaced. For a fraction of a second the Queen's eyes flashed fire and he wondered if the strength of his thoughts had made them audible to Her.

Instead She merely added, "She has probably thought better of it and decided to stay among her own kind. I will not waste any more time even thinking of the creature." So saying, She turned to the other wraith and ordered, "Leave orbit. Now."

The Queen turned back to Her Commander and visibly flinched at the fury she saw in his face. Without waiting for Her to dismiss him, the Commander turned on his heel and strode out of the room, daring anyone to stop him as he headed for the dart bays.

-oOo-

"The reek of wraith has doubled," the disembodied voice grumbled.

Lauren didn't mind the solitude of the Genii cell but she sorely wished this other prisoner would hold his tongue. She had to think, to try to find a way to escape and get back to her hive… to her wraith… Would he be looking for her, she wondered, or has his Queen already left, taking the only home she'd ever really known with Her? The thought brought back painful memories and she wondered if that other wraith she had loved so long ago had felt like this when he knew that he had been abandoned.

"You better watch he doesn't try to feed on you through the bars," the voice continued to whinge.

"Will you be quiet?" she barked and dropped her head into her hands.

"Patience was never one of your best virtues…"

Lauren's head snapped up again and her eyes widened. That was a different voice – a voice she knew well – and she turned to try to locate its source, fearful that her mind was playing tricks on her.

"Told you." The irritating voice she had listened to for several hours whined on and she did her best to shut it out as she stood and walked to the other side of her cell. The small barred window was positioned high in the wall and she wasn't sure if it was even within her reach. Grasping the sill with her fingertips she stretched onto the very tip of her toes until she could rest her chin on the sill. His face swam into focus slowly, but as it resolved itself into her field of vision she was overwhelmed with a swirling sea of emotions.

_He came for me!_ was her first thought, and feelings of love and gratitude made her dizzy with hope. But when she realised that he, too was a prisoner, despair and vexation drowned her optimism.

"I'm afraid I was not very successful in charging to your rescue," her wraith Commander said, his features so doleful that it almost made her laugh. "Had I been able to bring some drones…"

"You defied your Queen and came alone?" she gasped. He merely nodded. "For me – you did this for me?"

"Do you remember the day we first met…?" he asked her with a wistful smile.

"How could I forget?" she replied, offering him a small smile. "I had lost the only thing I ever loved, yet somehow I knew you would become just as important. You were kind to me…"

"That day I wondered what it must be like to have someone unable to live without you… what it would feel like to have you feel that way about me…" Lauren took a breath to speak and he pushed a finger through the bars and laid it on her lips. "Now I feel this love myself and, remembering that day, how could I go on living if I had not even tried to come for you?"

Her tears splashed like raindrops on the stone sill between them and he ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, but all he could do was push his fingers through the bars and wipe ineffectually at her cheek.

"How long I've waited to hear you say that," she told him, "But that our love should bring you to this! What have I done?"

"You have opened a wraith's eyes to the power and strength of human emotion," he replied. "And when we escape, my love, I will show them how these emotions can make our race stronger."

-oOo-

The irritating voice from the other cell no longer bothered Lauren; he was taken away one day and never returned. She had lost track of the days and weeks and months, having long ago given up making scratches on the wall to mark the passing days.

The only saving grace now was that they shared a cell together. Not that this was any concession or kindness on their gaolers' part, for she had heard the guards taking bets on how long it would be before he feeds on her to the death and they open the cell one day to find her just a dried out husk on the floor.

Unaware of the blissful peace his feeding hand had once given her, these uncouth Genii thought that forcing him to feed on her in short snatches would be torture for them both. It was, but not in the way these ignorant humans assumed.

The frustrated anger these soldiers saw in the wraith Commander's eyes when they dragged him from her was not because they stopped him from feeding, but because he could not think of a way for them to escape, to get her away from the disrespectful gibes and gropes of these ill-mannered guards. The distress they saw in her eyes was not because he was feeding upon her, but because she saw the flame of pride had dimmed in his eyes and he was losing hope, the once powerful wraith Lauren knew was dying inside before her very eyes as surely as she was.

In their misguided hatred, the Genii took to leaving them in the same cell together, threatening the wraith Commander with death if he fed upon her. They didn't know that he would allow himself to starve to death before he would take everything she had, nor did they know that she would gladly give it all to him if she thought it would save him. And so, when no one watched them, they huddled together in a dark corner, making the most of stolen moments in a futile attempt to keep hope alive. During those brief respites he tried to give back some of what he took, but he could feel that the strain was proving too much for her, for both of them.

"I should have loved you better…" he told her sadly as he cradled her in his arms. "The other wraith…"

"Is long dead and gone," she replied softly and without bitterness, her head nestled against his neck. "But I love him still, as I know you will love me when I am dead and gone." A desolate snarl vibrated through his chest. "We both know it is inevitable," she sighed. "No one has made me feel safer, more loved than you have. I cannot bear to see them do this to you… you must end it… end it now…"

"No! What would be the point of escape without you?"

"You cannot escape with me, my love. I am too weak; I would only hold you back." Lauren feebly lifted her hand and placed one fingertip to his lips to silence the angry growl she felt rumbling in his chest. The effort required for her to simply lift her hand was painfully obvious and she spoke in short fragments, between strained breaths. "You said you should have loved me better… I could never have wished for more from you… but the best way you can love me now… is to take it and stay alive… take it all… promise me… you'll escape… avenge me…"

It took mere moments to drain the last of her meagre life force and it barely even touched the hunger – and now he sat on a cold stone floor in a Genii cell, waiting for death to come and release him from his misery as he held in his arms the only thing that ever really meant anything to him, now gone forever.

It was then that he lost all hope.

-oOo-

He couldn't remember how long he'd been here; too long, he knew. So long it took him several minutes to register the voice from the other cell and to realise it meant he had company again, albeit irritating company.

"You're wasting your breath," he told the other prisoner who, although he could not see him, was clearly pacing up and down and ranting.

"Didn't know I had company down here," the voice replied.

"There is no escape," the wraith Commander assured the other.

"Yeah, well, prisons are like that. Never stopped me before," the other said, his words irritatingly flippant to the wraith who had endured so much here for so long. "How long you been down here?"

"Many years."

"How many is many – five, ten?"

"It no longer matters." Nothing mattered any more; nothing had mattered for a very, very long time, not since she had gone.

"That many, huh? What did you do to get here?"

"I merely allowed myself to be captured alive." Instead of rescuing her as I should have done, the wraith thought miserably; instead of taking her home to live a long and happy life with me; instead of preventing her from dying slowly in this dank damned hole where I've been rotting for decades since.

"Same here," the other replied. "Look, I've got people looking for me. When they find me, maybe we can both, uh…"

The wraith heard the clanking of keys against the bars, a sound that had now become so familiar to him, and he knew that the other had been taken away. He sighed deeply and retreated back into his self-pitying thoughts, but was interrupted barely minutes later when the guards came for him too.

-oOo-

They had long ago fashioned a kind of gauntlet and had made him wear it at all times, although he was now too weak and too hopeless to bother trying to feed on anyone but the pitifully few hapless prisoners who had outlived their usefulness to the Genii and were then fed to him. He briefly wondered what this one might have done to meet their fate at his hand, literally. But even in his currently dulled state of mind, he could see the second he stepped into the room that there was something different about this set-up.

Somewhere in the room, a voice said, "Sheppard could have left you to rot down in that hole when we last met, Kolya. He does _not_ deserve this."

The wraith snarled ineffectually at his tormentor, who replied to the speaker, "Let's be clear, Doctor McKay, no one does."

And yet, the wraith thought, this Genii had already overseen this very fate for numerous of his fellow humans. Had humankind no honour, no respect? Absurdly, given the current situation, the wraith saw in his mind's eye those soft blue eyes he had so longed to see just once more; the human eyes that reminded him that, yes, there were some of their race who knew what integrity meant.

But suddenly, the gauntlet was off, her face disappeared in a red fog and all he could see was another helpless human, all he could feel was the relentless burning hunger, scorching and searing his insides. He knew from past experience in this place that, even if he took his fill, it would not be enough and he had long ago resigned himself to wait for the sting of their cattle prod that heralded his being dragged back to his cell to nurse the nausea that sat heavy in the pit of his stomach like a moss-slick stone.

It was not long before he heard the guards bring the other prisoner back to the adjoining cell. He toyed with the idea of brooding alone and silent in his rank corner, but for a wraith to be alone is a torment he had gotten all too used to over the years and even this aggravating individual might help pass the time a little more agreeably.

"They called you Sheppard," he asked by way of starting what might pass for conversation in this hell-hole.

"Yeah. That's my name. Pleased to meet you."

"You're in pain," the wraith Commander observed, knowing full well why, but as yet uncertain if the human on the other side of the wall had worked it out yet.

"Well, I just got fed on by a wraith, what do you think?"

"I would not know."

"Hopefully, you'll never have to find out. I didn't think anything could hurt that much."

So he does not yet know who I am, the wraith thought and then said out loud, "You're still alive."

"Yeah, well, I don't know how many years the darned thing took off my life, but I'll tell you this – if Kolya's men hadn't pulled that damned thing off, I'd be dust in a flak jacket."

Still the flippant remarks, the wraith noted silently, and his mind went back to happier times at home on his hive with another human who had also frequently covered her distress with irreverence. "Do you blame the wraith or the master?" he said aloud.

"I'm gonna go with both."

The human's turn of phrase reminded him so much of her it almost hurt, but it also brought with it memories of nights they'd spent discussing the complexities of relationships between wraith and human; memories he had thought so long buried and forgotten that their return could not be grudged, no matter how bitter-sweet. "There is a difference," he replied. "The wraith must feed in order to live. For wraith, hunger burns like a fire." He could almost feel his spirits rallying, energized by the memory of the life he had had with her, of conversation that they had both enjoyed and had brought them closer to an understanding of each other. "Tell me, Sheppard, if you found yourself burning alive, would you settle for just one drop of water, or would you take more?"

Suddenly the human's tone became serious and he asked, "Where'd you hear them call me Sheppard?"

Ah, at last, the wraith thought and walked up close to the bars to confirm what he now knew the human had just realized. As he looked into the human's eyes for the second time, he answered, "Just before I started to feed."

-oOo-

The human called Sheppard radiated rage, the kind of helpless, futile rage he had felt the day the guards had dragged Lauren's desiccated corpse from his arms. He had considered fighting them so that he could keep her, carry on holding her until he eventually died of starvation, but would good would it have done when she was already gone?

"Your anger will only weaken you," the wraith told Sheppard.

"I don't think so," came the defiant retort.

"You realise he is torturing both of us?" His thoughts raced back, unbidden and unwanted, to the despair of those days when he had been forced to feed on her, to kill her in agonizingly small steps.

"Oh, yeah? What'd he do to you?"

The wraith Commander doubted that this one would understand what the Genii had truly done to him. "He stopped me," he said, ridiculously simplistic against the true nature of the torture he had endured.

"Really? And how is _that_ torture?"

"Have you ever known starvation, Sheppard?" he replied, doubting very much if Sheppard had even known physical hunger, let alone the spiritual and emotional starvation he had suffered in this cell for many decades since he lost the human he had loved. Instead he said aloud, "The few years I took from you are barely enough to keep me alive. The strength I gained from you is already fading."

"I don't really give a damn."

Most humans don't, the wraith thought. "You pace in your cell, cursing that I took years from you; I stand here cursing that I was not allowed them all. Each in our own way, we suffer." He looked down at the bars that had held his spirit captive for so long and remembered the suffering he and Lauren had gone through. But they had been together and, being together, they had endured.

Sheppard stormed up to the bars and yelled, "This might come as a surprise to you, but I'm not really in the mood for conversation. So why don't you just do me a favour and shut the hell up!"

The wraith slammed his hand through the bars in anger and then stopped. Sheppard grinned, no doubt because he thought the bars had halted the wraith's attempt to reach him. But what had stopped him was the sudden image of her face through these very same bars that first day they had come to be here together, the first day he had told her he loved her, the first day he realized that humans have so much more to offer even to wraith.

"These are your last hours, Sheppard. If you wish to spend them in silence, then so be it."

"No. I'm getting out of here," Sheppard insisted as he walked away from the window. "I've got a life to go back to and I'm damned well going back to it."

"You're sure of that?"

Sheppard leaned weakly against the opposite wall, but his words were full of determination. "Yeah, I've got friends – and they're gonna come for me."

"I hope you continue to believe that the next time I feed," the wraith countered, but buried deep in his mind was a small, quiet voice that reminded him of a promise he had made many, many years ago…

-oOo-

Another interrogation in which the Genii used him as if he were an instrument of torture; another all too brief snatch at life, and the glimmer of hope the wraith had felt mere hours before was floundering in the depths of his hopelessness.

"Where are your friends?" he asked Sheppard, who clung tenaciously to his own hope.

"They'll be here."

"You still believe that?"

"Yeah, I do. They just need more time."

"No one has ever left this place alive." The wraith had been here long enough to know that for certain.

"Yeah, well, I'm going to."

"Kolya will kill you before your friends have a chance to reach these cells." The wraith knew the labyrinth of corridors they had led him through on so many occasions, and knew they would be virtually impossible to navigate on first sight.

"How well do you know the layout of this place?" Sheppard persisted.

"Well enough to know what they would be up against."

"What about us? Do you know enough about this place to get _us_ out?"

"You and me?" The wraith almost laughed out loud at the human's audacity.

"What, are they gonna let you go after I'm dead?"

"No." He was too useful to the Genii as a monster to threaten and terrorise their victims with.

"Then what've you got to lose?"

The wraith knew he no longer had anything left to lose; he had already lost the only thing worth fighting for when he had taken the last breath of the woman he had loved. "My life," he answered unconvincingly.

"Oh, yeah, you've got a great one down here," Sheppard retorted. The wraith snarled but knew the human was right; what did he have left to live for? Sheppard went on, "Listen, it makes sense. We have a common goal."

"As I said before, there is no escape," and the wraith turned away and walked to the other side of his cell, trying to ignore not only the insane optimism of his prison mate, but also the softly insistent voice in his head reminding him that he had promised to avenge her.

The thoughts roiled in his mind so persistently that he didn't really notice the guards drag him back to the interrogation room and wasn't really listening when he girded himself to take just a tiny sip from the Sheppard human. Instead he was listening, listening to her voice in his mind, trying to remember…The best way you can love me… promise me… you'll escape… avenge me…

Suddenly he looked up, saw Sheppard close to the end and knew what he had to do. "He is near death," he said to the Genii named Kolya. "Shall I finish him?" he asked, hoping he had injected his voice with enough apathy and fatigue to get the result he needed. It worked. Sheppard had the reprieve the wraith needed to do what he now knew he had to do.

-oOo-

"You know, I could've sworn I was gonna wake up dead today."

"You are strong. Stronger than any human I have ever fed upon," the wraith told him, beginning to understand that he had much to learn about humans. Their strength, their capacity for hope against all the odds – even their love – was something he could use to grow and become stronger; not just him, but his entire race. The pieces began to fall into place…

"You stopped yourself," Sheppard said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Why indeed, the wraith thought. So many times he had asked himself what it had been about her that had fascinated him so, what it was that had bound him to her, made him unable to even think straight when her safety had been threatened. That first day he had seen her, sitting there in the hive's observation bay mourning the wraith that she, a human, had grown to love, he had felt envious of that other wraith. But there had also been a sense of fate, that their meeting was meant to be, and he recalled the feeling he had had of their meeting being only the beginning, the beginning of something important, something big.

How many times, sitting alone in this cell, had he railed at a fate that had ended her life in this stinking hole in this sorry way? Surely her destiny had been greater than that? But who was to say the part any of us play in the Universe was greater or lesser than any other: the role that nudged another just the tiniest fraction off their current course could then send them careering onto a path that changed the fate of millions for millennia to come.

A soft half smile flitted across the wraith's lips and his eyes flashed for the first time in way too long. "Because the longer I feed, the weaker you become – and we will need what strength you have left … to escape," he told Sheppard.

"Oh, _now_ he wants to escape!" Sheppard snorted in reply.

Ah yes, now he wanted to escape because now, at long last, he saw the reason why he had survived, even when all he had wanted to do was curl up and die.

He saw that Lauren's destiny had been to make him love her and, in doing so, bring him to this time and place, to cross paths with this John Sheppard at a time when his feelings for her had made him receptive to co-operating with a human.

Her destiny had been to bring him to his destiny.

The thought roiled around in his mind like a stone gathering momentum as it rolled down a hillside. He saw it all so plainly now and knew that he had no choice but to take this first step onto the path now before him: he owed it to her. He had known it from the day he first laid eyes on her – and he had been right all along – this really was only the beginning…

THE END


End file.
